The American Enterprise, September/October 1997 "Live with TAE"Rupert MurdochRupert Murdoch has been called both brilliant and vulgar (sometimes by the same person) but one thing no one can deny: He is the world's pre-eminent press baron. His newspapers, which include The Times of London, The Australian, and the New York Post, have a combined readership of over 60 million; his empire is rapidly expanding into television. Murdoch's Fox TV Network stunned those pundits who believed there would be a fourth member of the Trinity before there would be a fourth network. Fox's mixture of the superb (THE SIMPSONS, THE X-FILES) and the sordid (most everything else) has made it a target for those who seek to clean up television. Murdoch recently launched the Fox News Channel as a CNN competitor, though he has had trouble getting cable operators to carry it. (For more on Fox News, see the feature article later in this issue.) Rupert Murdoch, born and raised in Australia, became a U.S. citizen in 1985. He was interviewed by TAE editor-in-chief Karl Zinsmeister.TAE: Studies show that something like eight out of ten reporters at elite media organizations describe themselves as on the left of the political spectrum, compared to only a minor portion of the U.S. population. Clearly, this affects the slant of news coverage. Fox News says it is going to avoid that particular problem. How?MURDOCH: By trying to make sure that we be fair. We are not trying to balance the Left with an exclusively right-wing viewpoint, but we are watching in every way we can that the presentations of Fox News are as objective as possible.TAE: My own experience with news organizations is that, whatever the policies and principles at top, much of the actual content—the choice of topics and guests, the questions asked—comes from unseen, mid-level producers, guest-bookers, and so forth. Anyone starting a fresh news network today is necessarily going to be hiring most of his mid-level people away from existing TV networks. How is Fox News going to prevent these people from bringing the prevailing newsroom biases into its operation?MURDOCH: I don’t think we employ those sort of people. Roger Ailes keeps a very close watch on that.TAE: How important to the identity of the Fox News Network is this attempt to avoid bias? Is that your main selling point?MURDOCH: Yes. We were just having a debate—whether everything should be totally objective or whether we should allow people from the Left and people from the Right to have separate sessions, so that there is more equal time, but give everybody a little bit more, should we say, red meat to their own liking. So far, we have kept everything right down the middle. You can never claim perfection in these things.TAE: Given that there are already several national news networks, is it your niche to be unusual in terms of ideological objectivity?MURDOCH: Absolutely.TAE: You are still very much in the launch phase, having gone on the air in September?MURDOCH: Yes, that’s right. We’re new and we were first let down by Time Warner, who led us to believe that they were going to carry us, which gave us very optimistic expectations that were dashed at the last minute. Since I have announced that we are going to put Fox News on satellite, there has certainly been, should we say, a tightening up against us by the cable clan. I expect that will relax as we expand our audience. We expect to be in 25 million homes relatively quickly. That’s certainly enough to get word of mouth going. I think once demand builds up, cable managers tend to find room for you.TAE: So satellite will get your foot in the door, but your ultimate aspiration is to be on cable?MURDOCH: We want to be everywhere, whether it be by satellite or by cable.TAE: Are any of the cable folks telling you you are five years too late, we already have cnn and msnbc and too many news options already?MURDOCH: No, they don’t really. Some of them are saying that they don’t want any news options; that there’s no demand for news; that people want more old movies. Well, I don’t think either is true. In times of relative quiet, people don’t watch a lot of news. But surveys are showing an average of 200-240,000 people watching CNN at any one time. Whereas, with us, there’s probably only 40-50,000 watching at any moment in the 20 million homes that can get us. Over a day, that’s several hundred thousand viewers. But no one watches a news channel all day long. So, we think we’ve got our foot in the door and we will expand it. And having just gone on the air with a news show like “Fox Sunday Morning” we’re already getting a million homes watching. We are pleased with the program; we will start promoting that actively, and we expect that to double very quickly.TAE: One person I interviewed said that one of the advantages you have is that while CNN underwent its growing pains in public, with lots of people giggling about how amateurish it was at first, you have worked out a lot of the kinks in advance and are now working out the rest while your audience is still small. You will therefore have a high degree of professionalism by the time that you are seen by most people.MURDOCH: I think we’re very professional already. It’s really looking excellent. We spent a lot of money on equipment and people to get that right. When cnn started, it was an entirely new pioneering effort and it was coming out of Atlanta, which is pretty difficult. Cheap, but difficult. They did it for much less money than what it is costing us. We’re doing it in New York on a professional basis.TAE: You mentioned that one of the big obstacles that Fox News has faced so far has been opposition from Time-Warner.MURDOCH: Who own cnn, of course.TAE: Has this experience changed your view of Ted Turner as a business competitor, or has it confirmed old views?MURDOCH: Well, his unpleasant public statements have changed my views, have surprised me. But he is an extremely vigorous competitor. That’s been true all his life, whether in sports or television or anything.TAE: Has he been a fair competitor in this case?MURDOCH: No, I think that he’s been wrong about this because his executives, including his chairman, personally led me to believe that they were signing up with us.TAE: Is that a reversible decision?MURDOCH: Oh, sure, they could reverse it tomorrow if they wanted. And we haven’t given up. We are pursuing them in the courts and going through all that, but it’ll take a long time.TAE: What do you say to conservatives who tell you they are a little skeptical that Fox News will be more balanced and more representative of middle America, on the grounds that, on the entertainment side, Fox Television has introduced new levels of coarseness in language, sexuality, and so forth into TV?MURDOCH: First of all, the Fox entertainment network and Fox News don’t go together. Secondly, Hollywood is a very different and very difficult place. And I think if you watch the development of Fox over the last three or four years, since I’ve been there full-time, you would find that criticism to be not quite so true.TAE: Do you prefer that evolution away from coarser material?MURDOCH: Yes. You know, it’s very difficult. These things are very subjective. Some people think that some shows are terrible, others like them. Whereas, I would argue, it’s all quite harmless. I mean, except down into children’s shows. There’s nothing more violent than watching the news. I was just watching the rout of the hostage-takers in Peru. That could frighten children. It could frighten anyone. But no one is suggesting that should be kept off television.TAE: We had an interview about a year ago with Conrad Black, a publisher who competes with you in many places, including in England, where he puts out the Daily Telegraph. He expressed enormous admiration for your savvy as a business competitor. Then he also said: “Rupert Murdoch is a cynic who thinks that the average member of the public is essentially a slob, and the lower you pitch to him, the better he likes it.” How would you respond?MURDOCH: I disagree with him enormously. I certainly think that there are times when Conrad has his head in the clouds. He is an elitist. He is a very good publisher, but I’m not ashamed to publish popular newspapers, or to court the greater and larger public. They deserve being communicated with and being given the news as much as anybody else. I don’t think that is a matter of cynicism. I think it’s a matter of public duty. His London paper is much more cynical in that they publish all the filthiest court cases in the world, things which we would never publish in our popular papers, but they use very small type. I don’t know what made Conrad annoyed with me that day.TAE: This populist versus elitist perspective is a striking aspect of your business achievement—you have in the same portfolio very high-brow, high-toned publications and also very popular, often crassly popular, outlets as well. Do you ever become confused when you wake up in the morning as to which audience you’re serving?MURDOCH: No. Take a paper like the Sunday Times in London—which I would brashly, perhaps, but unashamedly claim to be the best newspaper in the English language at the moment. It has a tremendous mixture of reading and some very great writing in it, but if you want to call it elitist, I understand very well. On the other side I also own a very brash paper like The Sun, which is accused often of bad taste. But it is read and enjoyed by 12 million people a day who otherwise wouldn’t read any newspaper at all. We wouldn’t use the same writers in both papers, obviously. Here in the U.S., the New York Post—though people used to like to put it down—is, I think, respected and has tremendous influence. We’re not frightened of using a big headline. We have to; we have to sell on the street and other newsstands, and it’s a very hard struggle.TAE: Has it been your pattern that you don’t try to dictate editorial policy? The London Times more or less endorsed the Labour Party in Britain’s May election, didn’t it?MURDOCH: I don’t interfere with the Times or the Sunday Times in that. Talking and listening to the editor, I think he’s driven very much by a policy of Euro-skepticism, as are all our papers. I am much more deeply involved in policy for The Sun. There we came out in support of Labor for the first time in almost 25 years.TAE: How important is it to you that you do not find odious things in your newspapers or on your TV programs? To what extent do you monitor the content?MURDOCH: I don’t monitor it enough. I should monitor it more. It’s a matter of how many hours there are in a day. I’ve been known to complain very loudly sometimes.TAE: Could you give us an example of that?MURDOCH: No, because it would be unfair, but I’ve certainly done it with The Sun. I certainly did it with one or two things on Fox Television in the early days. I got after a particularly dreadful appearance by Michael Jackson on one occasion. But so much is subjective. Take a show like “Married With Children,” which is coming to the end of a 10- or 11-year run. I have to admit there’s a lot of bad taste in it. But I also have to say that it’s very, very funny. It’s a functioning family. And I’ve been known to laugh out loud at it. It is low-brow entertainment, if you like. But there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, television is watched by the masses, and the networks are having a tremendous struggle trying to hold their share of the audience against what’s on cable. We censor the films that we put on very hard. You may not think so looking at them. But compare them to hbo, where they’re absolutely uncut. We have strong standards people, watching what they consider acceptable and not acceptable.TAE: On those occasions when you do exercise some judgment or make your feelings known, do the newsroom people or the creative people have fits over you trying to intervene?MURDOCH: No. I’m the one who gets his face in the newspapers and gets criticized for what they do. It’s only fair that I should be heard on the matter.TAE: You mentioned the difficulty of monitoring because of constraints on your time.MURDOCH: What you have to do is appoint editors you can trust.TAE: How well do you know your editors at your major properties? Would you hire someone to be the new editor or editorial page editor at the New York Post without having spent some serious time with him or her?MURDOCH: Well, we’ve just appointed someone to the editorial page job, but he was the deputy there for some years beforehand. So we knew his work. We respected it and trusted it. I think I had lunch with him once or twice before confirming the appointment. Just to study one of the things we differ on, but can live with each other on. But in terms of the editor who produces that whole paper, he’s someone who has worked with me for 20 years.TAE: Let’s go backwards a little bit. Do you know any of the people who actually put out “Married With Children”?MURDOCH: No. I’ve met the actors. I’ve met one of the producers. Hollywood doesn’t work like that. We don’t even make the show at our own studios. It’s made by Sony. But what is worse, a crude joke in “Married With Children” or the things that you see on soap operas at three in the afternoon on the big networks—where there is more than suggestive behavior for two or three hours every day, at times when any kid coming home from school is free to watch? That has been going on for years and years and years. Is that a bad thing? I’m inclined to think that most things are excusable if they’re funny.TAE: Not a bad rule.MURDOCH: You’ve got to realize that, here and there, we may give offense to people.TAE: Do you have favorite journalists that you disagree with but you find hard to disrespect?MURDOCH: I read and very often disagree with but enjoy the work of Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. The same can be said of Bill Safire, although I’m more inclined to be agreeing with him, but sometimes not. But his is very original work and very well written. I could give you quite different examples of writers in Britain. Happily, most of the onesI enjoy work for us, but unfortunately not all of them.TAE: Are there journalists who just drive you nuts?MURDOCH: Yeah, but then I don’t read them. Life is too short to be reading Tony Lewis.TAE: You must have sentimental favorites amongst your many media interests and properties. Are there shows on your television network that you think are really enjoyable, clever, funny?MURDOCH: Using the word sentimental would be, perhaps, wrong, but I really think some of our work is very good. I think “The Simpsons” is an absolutely brilliant, brilliant comedy. Some people think it’s subversive, but it’s a very intelligently written comedy. Then we’ve just started a new thing called “King of the Hill,” which is much broader, which I think is very funny and well done. I’ll go on from that to something like “The X-Files,” which I have to say I think is brilliant drama. I don’t always like it, but it is brilliantly executed.TAE: There is a big flap now over foreign involvement in U.S. politics. Should we worry about foreign involvement in the U.S. media? If it’s worrisome that Indonesians or Chinese would give money to politicians, is it worrisome that they might own American news outlets?MURDOCH: I don’t think they’re going to have any influence. It’s amusing. I’m an American citizen and have been for many years and consider myself an American. But opposing newspapers always print that I’m an Australian and a foreigner. But that’s life. Interestingly, even in Australia, I’m treated as a foreigner. We’re currently running into some difficulties with regulations about foreign ownership of the media. I owned the New York Post before I became an American citizen, but I certainly wasn’t promoting anything un-American there. Governments and politicians always yearn for control of the media. But look at the examples. Take Conrad Black, the Canadian, who owns media properties in the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere. There are by now quite significant French investments in British television. I can’t point to any harm from any of those situations, or any influence being used to change government policies for reasons of international politics. I think if that happened, it would be exposed so quickly that the credibility of those organs would just disappear.TAE: You are in an industry where having your finger on the public pulse and understanding public taste is really the key to success or failure. Have you ever found that not having grown up in this country made it harder for you to understand why a given thing or publication or show would be popular, while another wasn’t?MURDOCH: No. You learn as you go along. America is interesting. In a lot of areas American humor is different from that of other countries. In Britain, for instance, satirical shows that really send up the British way of life can be very popular. Something like that here, you have to be very, very careful with, certainly in print. Americans are not as good at laughing at themselves as the British are. American drama is made for television. So it does exceedingly well around the world and gets great audiences. But comedy doesn’t travel as well. American comedies very seldom work abroad. The comedies here are getting a little broader now, but we went through a period where every comedy had to be politically correct. It was sort of the Norman Lear period. I don’t mean to be personal about it, but he was doing shows like “Maude” and so on that fell absolutely flat when they traveled the world.TAE: You have succeeded in lots of places under different circumstances. Do you consider yourself an internationalist? Or do you think of yourself as an American? Or an Australian?MURDOCH: Oh, an American, an American citizen.TAE: You gave a lecture in Melbourne in 1995 in which you argued that the spread of technology was dissolving the importance of nations.MURDOCH: I’ve forgotten that, but I certainly think that is true. There are still great national cultures, of course—though you might feel that less in this country because we’re such a mix of different migrants. That’s why I think the move to a European Federation is madness. It tries to kill a thousand years of history in one blow. But the spread of instant information is making the world a very different place. We see it in the reduced power of governments, for instance. And central bankers in various nations are certainly less powerful than they were. Just ask them.TAE: The personalities of nations still come into play in world events. Why are there, for instance, no international media moguls coming out of Japan today?MURDOCH: Oh, I don’t know. There is of course Mr. Idei of Sony—they are running a big movie and television operation in this country. Hollywood has been very happy to take their money.TAE: To take Sony’s money, yes. But they fell down badly in creative judgment. Where you have not.MURDOCH: Well, they did at the beginning. They’ve now put new people in there and changed things. We’ll see how that goes. There are major personalities in the Japanese media industry. But have they taken themselves around the world? No, they haven’t. They certainly aren’t here, and not in Europe, not I think even much around Asia.TAE: One of the few Asians who has media influence in this country is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, owner of the Washington Times and other properties. What sort of relations do you have with him?MURDOCH: I’ve never met the Reverend Moon.TAE: What do you think of his media properties?MURDOCH: I’m mystified. I think the Washington Times does a fantastically good job on small resources. He’s devoted tremendous resources to it by anybody’s standards. They must be working hard, for it’s all done at a fraction of the editorial budget of the Washington Post or other major American newspapers. Yet, time and again, they break very good stories and they’re very consistent. I don’t see it every day but I see it when I’m in Washington. It is said that his church’s association holds him back and hurts his credibility as a publisher. I would have said that, if there were evidence that they were pushing a particular agenda. But when I pick the paper up, I don’t see the agenda. The main problem facing the Washington Times is that once a newspaper like the Post becomes dominant, it is unassailable as a natural monopoly. The only competition, if you can call it that, is in the local television station.TAE: You seem to take energetic personal interest in your newspapers, even though some people say they represent yesterday’s technology, some day to go the way of the Edsel.MURDOCH: I don’t believe that.TAE: What is the source of your attachment to newspapers? Is it because they make business sense? Do you just like the role they play in a nation?MURDOCH: All of those things. They are not just business. I guess I’ve been in them all of my life and I find the role of publishing a newspaper the most satisfying and enjoyable thing that anybody could do in life. It’s less profitable than some other things. But it’s more exciting and more interesting and more urgent, and, I think, has more effect than running a television station.TAE: I’ve got a fascinating admission there. Rupert Murdoch is interested in a lot more than profit.MURDOCH: It would be very easy to hide and say I’m only interested in profit and loss. But I’m interested in the world of ideas and what is going on, and what can be done to change things.TAE: With all the practical demands on your time, how does one also follow journalists and arguments and politics and take an interest in arcane intellectual ideas?MURDOCH: I probably don’t do well enough. I’m spread a bit thin.TAE: Is your interest in ideas avocational or is it central to your work?MURDOCH: Absolutely, it must be central. I mean, if you’re producing things that the people aren’t reading, you’re wasting your time. Even employing all the best managers in the world, you have to understand the world around you yourself.TAE: Give me some examples of how you tell—other than through Nielsen ratings or what your employees tell you—when some new thing is interesting or important or sparking public interest.MURDOCH: You apply your own taste to it. It’s judgment. Sometimes you may be wrong, but you can, for instance, judge one newspaper against another. Judging what will be a successful motion picture is something different altogether, and more difficult.TAE: But terribly important. One bad mistake and you’re in big trouble.MURDOCH: We make them regularly.TAE: Are you ever able to get yourself into a theater with regular people and see what they like?MURDOCH: Of course.TAE: You’re not so much of a public figure that it’s impossible for you to be anonymous and to interact with people in that way?MURDOCH: No, no, no, I go to affairs.TAE: Do you ever do a “Prince and the Pauper” and put on a fake mustache so you can observe things unnoticed?MURDOCH: No.

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